Coming to campus

- December 12, 2005

Coming to Campus is a section announcing visiting speakers of note.

Those who wish to submit items for this section should send a brief description (maximum 300 words) of the event, including the date, time, and place, and giving the name, title, outstanding accomplishments and, if available, a color photo of the speaker to: Visiting Speaker, Advance, 1266 Storrs Road, Storrs, CT 06269-4144 or by e-mail: advance@uconn.edu, with Visiting Speaker in the subject line.

The information must be received by 4 p.m. on Monday, a minimum of two weeks prior to the event.

Publication will depend on space available, and preference will be given to events of interest to a cross-section of the University community.

Aging will be the focus of two talks at the Health Center in early January by geriatric oncologist Lodovico Balducci, a professor of oncology and medicine at the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute at the University of South Florida in Tampa.

On Wednesday, Jan. 4, he will give a lecture titled “Reaping the Fruits of a Lifetime,” exploring
the impact of class and culture on aging, the conditions of aging as assets rather than liabilities, and the medical and social challenges of the aging population. The talk will take place from 6 to 7 p.m.
in the Health Center’s Keller Auditorium.

On Thursday, Jan. 5, Balducci will discuss “Aging and Spirituality.” This lecture will take place from noon to 1 p.m. in the
Onyiuke Dining Room at the Health Center.

Registration is required for both events by calling 1-866-837-7737.

The programs are sponsored
by the Carole and Ray Neag
Comprehensive Cancer Center, the Celebrate Aging program,
and a grant from Pfizer Global Pharmaceuticals.

Northern complicity in slavery will be the topic of a presentation on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday by Anne Farrow, Jenifer Frank, and Joel Lang of The Hartford Courant.

“Exploring a Dark History” will take place on Sunday, January 15, at 3 p.m., in Room 130 of the Biology/Physics Building. Admission is free.

There will be a booksigning after the lecture.

The talk is sponsored by the Connecticut State Museum of Natural History and Connecticut Archaeology Center at UConn.

“We have traditionally been taught to think, ‘North good, South bad’ when it comes to slavery, but it’s much more complicated than that,” says Jack Davis, publisher of The Hartford Courant.

The three Hartford Courant journalists are authors of Complicity: How the North Promoted, Prolonged and Profited from Slavery.

They say the North’s deep involvement in the slave trade and dependency on slave labor to fuel its economy makes sense, if you “follow the money.”

The book exposes the startling extent to which individuals and businesses in the North depended on and profited from the labor
of millions of enslaved people, debunking the commonly held belief that slavery was solely a southern institution. For example,

Two Connecticut towns were international centers for ivory production, milling hundreds of thousands of tons of elephant tusks procured through the enslavement or death of as many as 2 million people in Africa.

New York City’s seaport was the hub of an enormously lucrative illegal slave trade.

Two slave revolts occurred in New York City in the first half of the 18th century. After the 1741 uprising, 31 blacks, all slaves, and four whites, were either hanged or burned alive at the stake. At that time, slaves made up one-fifth of the population of New York City.

Rhode Island was America’s leader in the slave trade, launching nearly 1,000 voyages to Africa, and carrying at least 100,000 captives back across the Atlantic.

Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New York all had plantations that used slave labor.

Free blacks living in the North were regularly kidnapped by whites and sold back into slavery in the South.

The book began as a special issue of the paper’s Northeast Magazine in September 2002.

The 80-page tab focused on Connecticut’s ties to slavery and was so enthusiastically received by readers, educators, historians, and
others that a reprinting of 30,000 additional copies was ordered.

The issue won several prestigious awards and was distributed to high schools and middle schools throughout Connecticut and to college classrooms and libraries throughout the United States.